Guy stuff.

In Praise of Virtual “Work” (aka Football Manager)

Some people play games to relax, to escape the tedium and/or stress of their jobs, to challenge their reflexes — physical and mental. Football Manager is a bizarre combination of both, which really should not be appealing at all. It can be stressful and tedious, while also challenging your mental abilities because, at the end of the day, it's a glorified spreadsheet with multiple pivot tables — and I love it so much, it's taken me a week to stop playing it long enough to write this post about it!

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Why I Don’t Give Career Advice: Army Dazed

I was tickled when I saw how Microcosm titled our conversation about my career path in the industry, and listening to it for the first time, it's another reminder that my path was a relatively unusual one, difficult and unlikely to be replicated in the structure of the current industry. That said, I do think there's still an opportunity (and more importantly, a need) for people to be more outspoken about the various challenges the industry is dealing with, dismantling whisper networks to level the playing field for those coming from non-traditional backgrounds.

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The Year-Long Scavenger Hunt (A 2023 Reading Challenge)

Comments on blogs aren't really a thing anymore, especially on this here blog, but I occasionally have someone pop in via WordPress Reader, I think, and while checking out the blog of one such commenter, It's The Bageler!, I discovered "The Year-Long Scavenger Hunt" at Birdie's Book Nook.

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On Mastodon — Four Months (and Five Years) Later

I still don’t consider Mastodon a straight Twitter alternative — at least not the Twitter we’ve come to know during the Trump/Musk Error — but it has replaced the Twitter I used to know and love back in the day.... Contrary to some self-serving media coverage, people continue to sign up and kick the tires — most surges apparently align to Musk's latest shenanigans — and a lot of them are sticking around and, like me, enjoying the experience.

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Masto do, Masto don’t? YMMV.

The biggest challenge I've seen for a lot of people with Mastodon seems to be picking the right instance. It's something you don't usually have to think about when signing up for a social network, but picking the right instance is both incredibly important for optimizing your overall experience, and arguably a waste of time in the very beginning.

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Twitter Detox

Of course, like quitting smoking or other addictions — and let's be honest, for some of us, Twitter had become an unhealthy addiction — it's left a gaping hole in my life. Over the years, Twitter had evolved into my main source of current events, engagement with topics of interest, and connections with people I've known for years but am unlikely to see in person any time soon. The spoke became a hub, something the marketer in me knew was very wrong.

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